Tales from Aincrad
by Anonymous Fanz
Summary: We know the story of the hero that cleared SAO. But Kirito's story isn't the only story. There were other other Floor Clearers. Other Solo Players. Other Beta Testers. This is one of those stories. ... Rating may be subject to change
1. Razor Tusk, the unimportant boss

**SAO. I'm writing a fanfic for this, because I feel that certain aspects of the series weren't explored deeply enough. And I thought it be cool if there was a fanfic with one chapter for each floor. So these are the Tales from Aincrad.**

 **...**

 _"I can't blame anyone that hates the Beta Testers. My story would prove everything they say about them right."_

...

The moment I was logged on, I saw a massive line. "What's going on?" I was curious. I never saw this many people in one spot in any game I've played. "The tutorial quest. We're waiting for it to cooldown." One of the people om they line answered.

The Quests in SAO have a cooldown. It prevents scenarios where someone can't complete a quest because too many other players are attempting the same quest. The only downside is that a lot of the time, you end up having to wait before you can start your quest for the same reason.

"Screw this! I'm done waiting." One of the players drew his sword. Vulcan. He's going to fight his way to the front of the line. I'd stop him, but there's no risk. We're in the Town of Beginnings. It's protected by the Anti-Criminal Code Effect. He can't kill anyone here. But he might figure out how to use a sword skill.

I shouldn't be wasting time here. I should be taking advantage. I should be leveling up before the swarm of players start hitting the rest of the game.

...

I left the starting city to get as far ahead in the game as possible. After Kayaba's announcement, every Beta Tester in the game will be racing to get the best gear on the floor, and level up as quickly as possible.

I'm looking for a secret cave. As far as I know, no one else in the Beta knows about it. Not too many people spent time looking around the first floor in the Beta. The cave has a boss, Razor Tusk. He doesn't drop any useful items, but he does give a lot of EXP, and isn't particularly tough. Every day in the Beta, I would kill him after logging on. No one else would bother looking for him, so he was always there.

Except for this time. I found something else

...

It's been about a month since I started the game. "You found the Boss Room?" Diavel asked. "Accidentally. I was looking for the Razor Tusk Boss." I explained my story to him. "You remember where he originally spawned in the Beta?" Diavel doesn't seem to be surprised that I'm a Beta Tester. Most people hate Beta Testers. "I killed him everytime I logged in." I replied.

I never really saw Razor Tusk as important. I was just taking advantage of one of the easy boss that no one cared to kill. His respawn timer wasn't as fast in the Beta as it is in the official release. When others players found him while they were looking for the boss room, they were completely surprised. For the first time, even the Beta Testers didn't know what to do. None of them cared about the weak boss with the sixth lowest EXP reward on floor one.

And yet the only thing I wanted to do right after I found the Boss Room was kill Razor Tusk. Kill him once for each day I stay trapped in this game. The day I found out where he was moved to, I killed him enough times to catch up for every day I missed. And I'm going to kill him once everyday from this day forward.


	2. Immovable object vs Unstoppable force

**I read the SAO progressive manga to write this chapter. A whole arc unused in the anime. The place where the Martial Arts Skill originated. Basically, the MAS is the skill that allows one to use sword skills with their punches and kicks.**

 **Wol5fe: One of the reasons I wrote this was because I thought no one did anything like it before. I've also been considering moving towards something similar to your "Where The Blades Fall" story, but I'm uncertain whether or not I want to stretch this story out to one hundred chapters or not. I might do it in another story, but I'll wait until I get to that floor.**

 **...**

Every game has that one task that everyone hates. This quest is that task.

The only reason I'm going for this quest now, is because it's going to be nearly impossible to do later when quest, when starts spawning Trembling Oxen nonstop. They hit you with enough damage to instantly kill you.

And they've already started spawning. Which means someones trying to break the rock right know. The quest requires us to break a rock in half. Without using our weapons, that is. And one of them already sees me. Not good.

I used my sprint skill. I leveled it up a lot on the first floor. Enough to speed across long distances. But I'm not sure if it's enough to out run the Ox behind me.

I sped up the hill and stopped. "What are you running from?" Another player asked. Wait a minute! I know that voice. That's Vulcan! The guy I saw in the tutorial area. He looks almost the same as before. Wait another minute! I let him attack those innocent players! They might be dead IRL!

"Trembling Ox. One hit kills players." I answered. The Ox ran up the hill and stopped. I watched it turn to me almost in slow motion. This feels overdramatic.

In the Beta, the Trembling Oxen weren't this persistant. But, they had their tracking range increased, so they'll follow you halfway across the floor. I've seen it happen once.

The Ox charged at me. I leaped out of the way. If I can get it to hit one of the rocks, it should get stunned similarly to when it hits walls. I ran towards a boulder and leap off it. My jump skill carried me high enough to land on top of the Ox. I grabbed onto and more or less started riding it.

It's only attacks are the charging and a ground stomp in front of it. The Trembling Ox can't hit me unless I fall off. It's probably going to change targets. "Vulcan! Get behind a rock!" I shouted. Vulcan ran behind the rock the Old Master was sitting on.

There's something called the Shield and Spear paradox. It's named after a story about a spear and shield a merchant was selling. The spear could pierce any shield, and the shield could not be pierced. The person buying the two asked what would happen if the spear were to strike the spear. The merchant had no answer.

In this case, the rock is the shield, and Ox is the spear. When the two crashed, they both destroyed each others HP. Neither survived. I fell off the Ox and landed on my back, but the pain is nothing compared to being fall off of the real deal.

"Where did you learn to do that?" Vulcan asked. I didn't pick those skills up in game. "My grandparents own a farm. Because my dad is usually busy, he'd send me there during the summer." I think this is the first time anything I learned there helped me in a game.

A scimitar was held over my head. Got his weapons back already? "How did you know my name?" He asked. Threatened, more accurately. "I saw you on the first floor." I answered.

I've been wondering. "You look the same as then." I noted. "That's because I modeled my character after myself." Vulcan replied, sheathing his sword. He went through alot of work to make himself. Has to be less annoying than some other players created models. "And then Kayaba finished it for you." I noted.

"The worst part about that, is noticing every detail I got wrong." Vulcan laughed. Detail? "I haven't noticed any differences." I noted. "It's the little touches that I noticed that annoy me the most." He answered. "Yeah, that has to suck." I laughed. "Almost as much as waiting for the rock to respawn so I can do this again." I am going to have so much fun with that.

"We could party up, and find one faster." Vulcan suggested. I haven't been in a party since... "Sure. We did complete the quest together." Why did I say that? "It's the least I can do. It wouldn't be fair to let you do it again on you own." Vulcan drew his sword and ran off to find another Ox.


	3. The Eye of Odin

**This story would get boring if it was just our sole narrator recalling random events from each floor. But they're not random events.**

 **...**

I was surprised when I got Vulcan's message. I hadn't seen him since we got the Martial Arts skill. Apparently, he wants to talk about something.

"I'm glad you came." Vulcan looks excited. Looks like he upgraded his gear too. "What did you want to talk about?" I asked. I don't know why he's doing this. "We managed to findout the easiest way to clear the Martial Arts quest." Vulcan explained. "Imagine what would happen if we did this to other quests?" Vulcan wants to keep working together.

I see what he's getting at. "You want me to use my knowledge of the Beta to help people." I restated. "More than that. I think we can work together to figure out what's been changed and how to adapt." Vulcan explained.

That makes a lot of sense. The knowledge of a Beta testers alone won't help anyone. He wants to create a form of scouting party. I want to help, but after what happened last time... "I'll see what I can do." I replied.

Vulcan opened his menu. He sent a guild request. "The Eye of Odin." I read the guilds name. "It's a refrence to Norse Mythology. Odin is a god who sacrificed an eye to gain infinite wisdom." Vulcan explained. He knows a lot about mythology. I think he might have been attracted to SAO by the lore of it's story, rather than the new experience.

I rejected the request. "I think I'd be better off continuing as a solo player." I explained. I don't think there's anything more than information I can offer them. "I'm still going to help you, but not as an official member." I'm not sure if I'm ready to work with other players, but I'm trying.

"You invited anyone else to this guild?" I asked. "Yeah. I think I should introduce you to them." Vulcan opened his menu and sent a message to the entire guild to meet at a tavern on the 3rd floor.

...

The guild isn't very big. It's just me, Vulcan, and four other players. "Everyone, this is Cyclone." I think that's the first time I've heard anyone say my username. That's how little I've seen of other players. "He's the Beta Tester that showed me that trick with the Ox." Vulcan's overselling my abilities. "Just to be clear, that was also when I accidentally created the trick." I noted.

Vulcan walked up to a short round guy with a two handed sword. Huge damage, but it's a bit sluggish. "This is Goliath." Vulcan introduced.

"With a name like that, you'd expect him to be taller." I joked. "I used to be taller!" Goliath snapped. I'm guessing he has a Napoleon Complex. "He's our tank. Risky work, but it's good to have someone that can take a lot of hits." Vulcan explained.

Vulcan pointed to a girl with a one handed axe. They reduce durability fast, making them for breaking armor and grinding wood. "That's Singularity." These guys have a way with names. "If you need calculations, come to me." Singularity offered. "She's a math genius. She might be our most valuable member." Vulcan admitted.

Another girl coughed. She looks familiar, but I don't know why. "Shade is our best fighter. Our other asset." Vulcan explained. This girl is using a one handed curved sword and a shield. Great offensive weapon. Partially ignores shields.

"You do not want to duel me." Shade warned. "Trust me, you don't." The last member added. That guy has a tall, thin build. "And last, but not least, Limbo." He's using a mace and shield. Mace's deal a lot of damage, but they can't apply wounds.

"I killed him on the first floor before the Kayaba explained the death game thing." Vulcan explained. "Fortunately, Kayaba didn't disable respawning at the time." Limbo added. So no one died at that point. Good to know.

"Cyclone is going to provide us first hand Beta experience." Vulcan explained to his guild. "I'm also a pretty good shield user." I added. I'm currently a one handed sword and shield. I'm mostly focusing on using one handed weapons, so I can level up my shield as much as possible.

"Together, we're going to make sure that people know what to expect from every task." Vulcan is making an inspirational speach. "We're going to close the gap between the floor clearers, and everyone else." That's definitely going to speed up clearing the game. "And we're going to get ahead of even the Beta testers knowledge." That won't be easy, but it's possible.

Maybe one day, I'll join them officially. But for now, I'm going to keep going solo. It's easier for me that way.


	4. Hunting a one-eyed bear

**Cyclone is going to leave for a bit. I'd like to show off Vulcan and the new guild more.**

 **I watched a video, "Why SAO is a terrible videogame, too". It did one of the things that inspired me to write this: look at how SAO as a videogame would be seen by our world.**

 **A lot of the points of game design can be argued by the death game design theory: Most of the the company's helping were creating assets, not designing the game itself: They gave Kayaba pieces, but they didn't know how he'd use them, thus weren't able to predict that he'd use them in a way that wouldn't pay out for them.**

 **However, the really low player numbers don't get covered by that. I** **have a different theory of why it might have sold better than than the amount of players would suggest: Player cap theory.**

 **Since most MMO games have a massive number of players, they seperate the players into servers so that they don't get crowded. From what I've seen, there seems to only be one server. If SAO had too many players, they could break the game by swarming every boss until they either die out of reach the last floor, something the video noted.**

 **To fix that, Kayaba probably sold nonfunctional copies or disabled people from joining if the reached a certain amount of players, to keep the game from being overpopulated. I'm not completely certain that the game had a global release, or if all sold copies where played. Some people might have been lucky and were warned about the game before playing.**

 **Another thing to keep in mind is that when a lot of players are logging into an MMO at once, it slows down to setup each player one at a time. This means that some of the players may have been saved by a really long loading screen.** **If those players never made it in, Kayaba wouldn't trap them. He's shown to be nice enough to let them leave early because Kirito figured him out, and won a duel. And if they did get in, it would exclude them from the initial count.**

 **There's also the fact that he announced the death game early on in the game, AFTER alerting authorities. That means that there was time to stop copies from being sold in certain parts of the world where stores haven't even opened yet. If we're looking at a global release of SAO, he may have sabotaged his own sales.**

 **The most important thing is to remember that SAO wasn't made to be a videogame. It was created to be a death game. It looks like fun, but when your forced to play it for two whole years nonstop, things change. But I guess that goes for any game you play for two years straight, without stopping to eat or sleep IRL, while under the threat of death.**

 **But that's just a theory. A theoretical videogame theory! One that's taking up too much of my chapter.**

 **...**

 _Vulcan_

I'm a bit dissapointed that Cyclone isn't joining the guild. He's an asset. At least he'll be helping us from outside.

I suppose working as a solo player at this stage of the game is better for him. As a solo player, he can get further, because he isn't sharing his XP and Col with a guild. And as a Beta Tester, he knows more about surviving the game than we do.

I'm more worried about finding us a sixth member. That why we can form a full party. If we can fill up the roster, we can maximize our chances of not being killed. As a guild, we're stronger than we would be alone, but nowhere near as efficient as a Beta tester. Hopefully, Cyclone's info will be enough to keep us alive.

Although this floor probably isn't going to be Beta Tester friendly. Apparently they added waterways to what used to be a desert map. They also added the Gondola, a boat to travel over the water.

Even though I told Cyclone about the gondolas, he is still trying to level up his swimming. He thinks he might need the skill later. Singularity wanted to find out how quickly the swimming stat builds, and at one point it outperform the gondolas, so she left with him.

The rest of my guild is trying to figure out if one of the Beta Tests is still completable. It's a bounty quest. Kill a specific boss, and leave. If they didn't change the reward from what Cyclone got, then it gives a cool rapier. "Paralytic Thorn". It is the earliest weapon with the paralysis effect.

The problem is that the boss is in an area covered by water now. "Kayaba added Gondolas, right?" Limbo asked. "Yeah. We're trying to solve that problem." I answered, slightly annoyed. He asks a lot of questions. Some of them are good, and other are annoying. "So, you think he might have put the boss so it can swim, and still fight us?" Limbo asked. That is a good question.

...

Limbo rowed the gondola in the direction of the bosses previous location. "Doesn't look like he's here." Shade noted. "He could be moving around." I noted. Cyclone said something about the boss being a one-eyed bear that patrolled this area. Others thought he was moved to the Forrest area, but all they found was an empty cave where the quest says the Bear should spawn.

"Look, another gondola!" Goliath pointed to another ship. "That's not a gondola." Goliath noted. It's a Frigate. And it's coming in our direction. "Who is that?" Limbo asked. "That's the boss." I answered. I drew Bloodthirsty Edge, my Scimitar. It gains an attack bonus when I kill an enemy.

The Frigate is a lot faster than our gondola. Which probably because frigates were built for speed and manueverability. The frigate forced our gondola to anchor. I can see the enemies on the ship. Atlantean. Fish people, named for the lost city of Atlantis. I haven't seen them before.

I figured out why no one found the boss. It must be on the ship. I jumped off the gondola, and climbed aboard the Frigate. There's about twelve of these guys. One of them is a sword wielding boss, named "Captain Triton". Triton is the fish-tailed son of Poseidon. He has a scaly face with gills, but no tail.

Shade followed me up, and started killing the other Atlanteans. Allowing me to go face Triton alone. I used a sword skill, Reaver, to charge him. Triton used a sword skill to knock me into the air. Shade used her shield to block Triton's attacks while the others got on board the ship.

I took a second to heal before switching with Shade. I used Reaver again, reducing Triton's health to 50%. Triton switched his weapon to a Trident. Limbo blocked the attack. The Trident gets one hit for each blade. That's a powerful weapon in the right hands.

Goliath used his sword, "Colossal Crusher", to unleash a spinning slash skin. The high damage attack removed another ten percent of Triton's health. Limbo followed up by using his mace to strike Triton, causing stun. We all surrounded him and attacked until his remaining health was depleted.

Shade got the last attack bonus. "It's a new gondola." Shade explained. "Can I have it? Mine just got destroyed." Limbo noted. It did? I probably should have helped them defend it, instead of rushing in. "Sure." Shade placed the gondola in the guild inventory, allowing Limbo to move it to his personal inventory.

I heard a loud growling, amd turn around to see a one-eyed bear. I completely forgot about him.


	5. An unusual dungeon

**I keep getting amazed by how much SAO has. It has a Live action tv series in production. I never imagined that could happen.**

 **...**

 _Goliath_

Cyclone was definitely right about this floor being great for loot. It has a lot of dungeon quests with better rewards than the previous floors. Most of the dungeons on the previous floors are overleveled. When you find one labled with a "do not enter sign", it's usually because someone almost died in there from a enemy they can't even read the level of yet.

The dungeons on this floor are the exact opposite. The hardest ones aren't much harder than the earlier floor boss fights, and easier to figure out. It helps that these dungeons haven't been changed much. Some of them don't even have enemies guarding them. Which is odd. Either they aren't loading up, or Kayaba just assumed the extra regular enemies would be challenging enough.

Between me, Shade, Limbo, and the Beta Tester, I'm sure we could complete all of these dungeons right now. "I think we should go back." Cyclone said. Apparently, he doesn't agree. "Why? We could probably take all of them." I argued. "We don't need to. We have plenty of loot." Cyclone noted. True, we found great weapons and gear.

"What could go wrong?" Limbo asked. "We die." Shade answered. That was a morbid, but honest answer. Cyclone sighed. "Sure. Whatever." He said.

...

This room looks odd. It's a cave a lot of graves and water. "Whose graves are these?" Limbo asked. I don't want to know. What I'm interested in finding out is why I can't see enemies in this room.

I don't know if we're still in the dungeon. We might have found a secret room we're not supposed to enter. The water looks weird. It's green, but not sea green. And there's plants nearby that look dead. This place feels like a horror movie set.

Cyclone slashed the dirt in front of a grave. The pile filling the grave shattered like a broken item. Inside the grave was a corpse holding a sword. He rose from his grave, and his three health bars started filling up. His name was "Undead Knight of Locke"." Alright, so he's the boss fight. An easy one at that.

Four started climbing from their graves. With the same name and health. Their weapons and armor differed, but they were still the same character model.

"Multiple dungeon bosses?" Limbo asked. These are more like mini-bosses, but it's still unexpected. The others only had a one boss, an army of regular enemies, or both. This is completely different.

I hit one of them with my Two-handed Broadsword, knocking him back. I'm glad this dropped off that last boss we fought. I cut him through him vertically, but that only broke his armor.

Limbo rushed in with a 3-hit Sword skill. It did a lot of damage, but it left the Knight behind Limbo. The Knight impaled Limbo, but he countered by impaling himself to get a last hit on the Knight. Limbo pulled out the sword before he could lower his health past the yellow point.

Shade killed another Knight with two vertical slashes. Cyclone is fighting the other three by himself. His shield is blocking most of the damage. As long as he stays on defense, he doesn't about his health. However, shield defense isn't permanent. After an amount of damage is blocked, you're forced to switch to offense while your defense recharges, otherwise you'll just take regular damage.

When Cyclone reached that point, he used a sword skill. It was a vertical slash that damaged all three Knights, and knocked them back. Limbo switched his equiped weapon back to a mace, and smashed one of the bosses. I used my sword to kill another. Cyclone punched the last one.

"What skill was that?" Limbo asked. Sometimes, I find that guy to be very annoying. "The Martial Arts skill. The one he helped Vulcan obtain when they first met." Shade answered.

I just noticed something. She's been unusally chatty. Normally, she doesn't answer questions that aren't directed at her. And she rarely answers Limbo's questions, unless the answer is important. Probably just the forced social interactions making her more sociable.

"What is this?" Cyclone looked at the last hit reward he gained from killing the last Knight. "Medal of Locke." It doesn't have any visible stats, or an equip option. Weird. "I think this is a quest item." Cyclone said. "Why?" Limbo asked. "Because this room is unique, and it dropped this unique item. We're probably supposed to give it to an NPC" Cyclone explained. Now we have to over quest help requests. Great.


	6. Never scam a scammer

**I'm hoping that the Live Action series doesn't make the same mistakes as the anime and manga. I'm hoping they try to take more time to establish the setting, like the Progressive Manga, so we can see Kirito clearing individual floors, while dealing with other plots. I'm fine with some floors being skipped, but I want each game to have their own season, instead of half of one.**

 **Anyway, I'm introducing more new characters. One of them will be important in the next few chapters, while the other one will be important sometime later.**

 **...**

 _Neptomaniac:_

Now to collect the gear those idiots threw away. I can't believe they fell for that scam. They actually thought they'd get a special robbing skill by offering gear to the Shrewmen. You'd think that blacksmith scam would've taught them not to trust other players. Or that they'd at least ask for a demonstration.

"You're scamming players into giving you their items." Oh, look. Someone who's not a complete idiot. "In my defense, I wasn't expecting anyone to fall for it." I don't even know what I'm going to do with their gear. Do I give it back to them, or keep them for myself. Either way, they'll learn their lesson.

"I need your help." I turned to him. He isn't wearing any clothes. Or at least, he's shirtless, from what I can see. A shirtless nerd. Not something I wanted to see, ever. I now have a newfound pity for the overweight. I'm still taking back that comment on him not being an idiot.

"Okay?" I answered, to confused by the bizarre situation to question about why I agreed to help him. "I was robbed by a guild. They took all of my gear." This idiot got himself robbed. Great. And ironic, considering that he's asking a scammer for help.

"You want the gear the idiots gave away." I realized. "I need any gear you have. It's my only chance of stopping the people that robbed me from going after others." It's such a touching story. I don't buy any of it.

"Show me your inventory." I ordered. It's the only way to prove it. "What? It's empty." He replied. I can't take his word for it. "Then you shouldn't have a problem showing it to me." I answered.

He wasn't lying. HIS inventory is empty. However, I see something else. "You're part of a guild." I spotted his scam. "It's how they robbed me. They tricked me into joining so they could take all my gear." There's a few holes in that story. "So how'd they get all the items from your personal inventory" I asked. That's not accessable to them.

He started equiping gear from his guild's inventory. The other hole in his story is that he could do that. "How much of those were stolen?" I asked. "We only take from Beta Tester scum like you." How many Beta Testers were stupid enough to get get scammed by these guys? "Says the parasite that leaches off stronger players." I retorted.

"The Heroes of Aincrad are gathering strength. Soon, we will erase all Beta Testers from SAO." Now he rambling about his stupid guild. I'm just going to go back to killing rats. Speaking of, I'm going to need to get a new bait. One of the rats took it while the idiot distracted me.


End file.
